This thesis is based on five research papers with string theory as the least common denominator. The text is divided in two parts. The first part is an introduction to the constructions used in the papers; string theory, conformal field theory, topological field theory and three-dimensional gravity. The second part is a review of a concept believed to be important in any theory of quantum gravity, the so called holographic principle.

A relation between three-dimensional topological field theory and two-dimensional conformal field theory is re-established in a classical formulation. This result is then used to investigate holography in a toy model, gravity in three dimensions. A construction is proposed which yields the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of a three-dimensional black hole. The same mechanism is shown not to be responsible for the entropy of Kerr-de Sitter spacetime.

Similar methods yields a relation between topological field theories in five and seven dimensions and chiral conformal field theories in four and six dimensions.

There presumably exists a class of conformal field theories with novel properties, so called logarthmic conformal field theories. By starting from a conventional theory, a systematic way to deform this to a logarithmic theory is developed.

We perform a canonical and BRST analysis of a seven-dimensional Chern-Simons theory on a manifold with boundary. The main result is that the 7D theory induces for consistency a chiral two-form on the 6D boundary. We also comment on similar behaviour in a five-dimensional Chern-Simons theory relevant for $\N=4$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory in four dimensions

3.

Fjelstad, Jens

Karlstad University, Faculty of Technology and Science, Department of Physics and Electrical Engineering.

We review and extend the results of [1] that gives a condition for reducibility of quantum representations of mapping class groups constructed from Reshetikhin-Turaev type topological quantum field theories based on modular categories. This criterion is derived using methods developed to describe rational conformal field theories, making use of Frobenius algebras and their representations in modular categories. Given a modular category C, a rational conformal field theory can be constructed from a Frobenius algebra A in C. We show that if C contains a symmetric special Frobenius algebra A such that the torus partition function Z(A) of the corresponding conformal field theory is non-trivial, implying reducibility of the genus 1 representation of the modular group, then the representation of the genus g mapping class group constructed from C is reducible for every g\geq 1. We also extend the number of examples where we can show reducibility significantly by establishing the existence of algebras with the required properties using methods developed by Fuchs, Runkel and Schweigert. As a result we show that the quantum representations are reducible in the SU(N) case, N>2, for all levels k\in \mathbb{N}. The SU(2) case was treated explicitly in [1], showing reducibility for even levels k\geq 4

4.

Fjelstad, Jens

Karlstad University, Faculty of Technology and Science, Department of Physics and Electrical Engineering.

In this paper we provide a general condition for the reducibility of the Reshetikhin-Turaev quantum representations of the mapping class groups. Namely, for any modular tensor category with a special symmetric Frobenius algebra with a non-trivial genus one partition function, we prove that the quantum representations of all the mapping class groups built from the modular tensor category are reducible. In particular for SU(N) we get reducibility for certain levels and ranks. For the quantum SU(2) Reshetikhin-Turaev theory we construct a decomposition for all even levels. We conjecture this decomposition is a complete decomposition into irreducible representations for high enough levels

We prove a no-ghost theorem for a bosonic string propagating in Nappi-Witten spacetime. This is achieved in two steps. We first demonstrate unitarity for a class of NW/U(1) modules: the norm of any state which is primary with respect to a chosen timelike U(1) is non-negative. We then show that physical states - states satisfying the Virasoro constraints - in a class of modules of an affinisation of the Nappi-Witten algebra are contained in the NW/U(1) modules. Similar to the case of strings on $AdS_3$, in order to saturate the spectrum obtained in light-cone quantization we are led to include modules with energy not bounded from below, which are related to modules with energy bounded from below by spectral flow automorphisms

7. Fjelstad, Jens

et al.

Fuchs, Jürgen

Karlstad University, Faculty of Technology and Science, Department of Physics and Electrical Engineering.

Hwang, Stephen

Karlstad University, Faculty of Technology and Science, Department of Physics and Electrical Engineering.

The correlators of two-dimensional rational conformal field theories that are obtained in the TFT construction of [FRSI,FRSII,FRSIV] are shown to be invariant under the action of the relative modular group and to obey bulk and boundary factorisation constraints. We present results both for conformal field theories defined on oriented surfaces and for theories defined on unoriented surfaces. In the latter case, in particular the so-called cross cap constraint is included

Two-dimensional conformal field theory (CFT) can be defined through its correlation functions. These must satisfy certain consistency conditions which arise from the cutting of world sheets along circles or intervals. The construction of a (rational) CFT can be divided into two steps, of which one is complex-analytic and one purely algebraic. We realise the algebraic part of the construction with the help of three-dimensional topological field theory and show that any symmetric special Frobenius algebra in the appropriate braided monoidal category gives rise to a solution. A special class of examples is provided by two-dimensional topological field theories, for which the relevant monoidal category is the category of vector spaces

We study the sewing constraints for rational two-dimensional conformal field theory on oriented surfaces with possibly non-empty boundary. The boundary condition is taken to be the same on all segments of the boundary. The following uniqueness result is established: For a solution to the sewing constraints with nondegenerate closed state vacuum and nondegenerate two-point correlators of boundary fields on the disk and of bulk fields on the sphere, up to equivalence all correlators are uniquely determined by the one-, two,- and three-point correlators on the disk. Thus for any such theory every consistent collection of correlators can be obtained by the TFT approach of hep-th/0204148, hep-th/0503194. As morphisms of the category of world sheets we include not only homeomorphisms, but also sewings; interpreting the correlators as a natural transformation then encodes covariance both under homeomorphisms and under sewings of world sheets

11. Fjelstad, Jens

et al.

Hwang, Stephen

Karlstad University, Faculty of Technology and Science, Department of Physics and Electrical Engineering.

The equivalence between the Chern-Simons gauge theory on a three-dimensional manifold with boundary and the WZNW model on the boundary is established in a simple and general way using the BRST symmetry. Our approach is based on restoring gauge invariance of the Chern-Simons theory in the presence of a boundary. This gives a correspondence to the WZNW model that does not require solving any constraints, fixing the gauge or specifying boundary conditions

We describe three-dimensional Kerrde Sitter space using similar methods as recently applied to the BTZ black hole. A rigorous form of the classical connection between gravity in three dimensions and two-dimensional conformal field theory is employed, where the fundamental degrees of freedom are described in terms of two dependent SL(2,C) currents. In contrast to the BTZ case, however, quantization does not give the BekensteinHawking entropy connected to the cosmological horizon of Kerrde Sitter space

13.

Hwang, Stephen

et al.

Karlstad University, Faculty of Technology and Science, Department of Physics and Electrical Engineering.